Caledonia

Caledonia, a Scottish colony at Darién (in present-day Panama), 1698–1700. Also known as Fort Saint Andrew, New Edinburgh, and New Saint Andrew. Under the leadership of William Paterson and with backing from London merchants, the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies was established in June 1695. In hopes of developing lucrative trade with the Spanish Indies as well as expanding agricultural and mining operations on the isthmus, this company planted a colony of settlers on the Caribbean coast near the Gulf of Darién in 1698. They named the colony Caledonia and established a town called New Edinburgh. Fort Saint Andrew (sometimes called New Saint Andrew) was built on a platform overlooking the site. This first attempt at colonization failed, however, in the face of short supplies and Spanish raiding. Leaving more than four hundred graves at Caledonia, Paterson and all but a dozen of the remaining colonists abandoned the site on 18 June 1699 and left for Scotland via Jamaica and New York. A few weeks later, a Spanish force under Juan Delgado arrived and destroyed the fort, burned New Edinburgh, and captured one of the survivors.

A second expedition reestablished the colony and fort in November 1699, but internal dissension, disease, Spanish threats, and the inability of the company to sustain its own support led to its final abandonment. Fort Saint Andrew surrendered to the Spanish on 30 March 1700 with the understanding that the settlement would be vacated within two weeks. More than a thousand Scots had died in the venture before the remainder left Caledonia on 12 April 1700.

This disaster contributed to ill feeling between England and Scotland as well as between Britain and Spain. A flurry of publications immediately following the disaster reflected the intensity of feeling and interest in the matter.

See alsoPanama .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Among the contemporary publications, see especially A full and exact collection of all the considerable addresses, memorials, petitions … relating to the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies…. (1700).

Walter Harris, A Short Vindication of Phil. Scot's Defence of the Scots abdicating Darién (1700).

[George Ridpath], An Enquiry into the causes of the miscarriage of the Scots Colony at Darién (1700).

[Robert Ferguson], A just and modest vindication of the Scots design…. (1699). Several rather full treatments of the Darién colonization effort were published early in the twentieth century, notably J. S. Barbour, A History of William Paterson and the Darién Company (1907).

Frank Cundall, The Darién Venture (1926).

George P. Insh, The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies (1932).

Francis Russell Hart, The Disaster of Darién: The Story of the Scots Settlement and the Causes of Its Failure, 1699–1701 (1929), the latter containing a large documentary appendix. The most complete account is John Prebble, The Darién Disaster: A Scots Colony in the New World (1968).

Additional Bibliography

Gallup-Diaz, Ignacio. The Door of the Seas and Key to the Universe: Indian Politics and Imperial Rivalry in the Darién, 1640–1750. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.

Watt, Douglas. The Price of Scotland: Darien, Union and the Wealth of the Nations. Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2006.

                                     Sue Dawn McGrady

Cal·e·do·ni·an / ˌkaləˈdōnēən/ • adj. 1. (chiefly in names or geographical terms) of or relating to Scotland or the Scottish Highlands: the Caledonian Railway.2. Geol. relating to or denoting a mountain-forming (orogenic) period in northwestern Europe and Greenland during the Early Paleozoic era, esp. the late Silurian.• n. 1. humorous or poetic/lit. a person from Scotland.2. (the Caledonian) Geol. the Caledonian orogeny.

Caledonia the Roman name for northern Britain, later applied poetically or rhetorically to Scotland, as in Scott's The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), ‘O Caledonia! stern and wild’.
Caledonian Canal a system of lochs and canals crossing Scotland from Inverness on the east coast to Fort William on the west. Built by Thomas Telford, it was opened in 1822. It traverses the Great Glen, part of its length being formed by Loch Ness.

Caledonian XVII.f. Calēdonia, Roman name of part of northern Britain, now assoc. with the Scottish Highlands or Scotland in general.